Looking Like a Wet Year

Rain, and plenty of it, has been the story of 2023 so far. The GBGC weather station has received 8.22" of rain since Christmas and recorded 2.90" on New Year's Eve alone. We recorded 12.34" of rain in December, the most ever for GBGC, and have recorded 2.90" through the first 5 days of January. 

When it gets this wet it's hard to play golf as well as get anything meaningful done on the golf course. We can't do the kind of work we had planned, such as supplemental irrigation or surface drainage work because it is too wet and this type of work cannot be done in wet weather. Even the tree pruning and brush clearing we had planned is being replaced by the need to process trees and parts of trees that continue to come down during the storms. Until Saturday night we had not lost anything that would affect the integrity of the course. However, during the windstorm of Saturday evening 1/7/23, we lost the multi trunk live oak on the left-hand side of #4, 200 yards out. (See picture below) 

For the big picture all of this rain is good news. The rain will stop at some point, and the course will dry out. Until then, we'll keep reacting to what nature brings us. Below are some pictures of the weather story of the past couple of weeks.

Overhead showing the flow lines of #12 during storm last week.

Upper practice green during rainfall.

18 years of GBGC weather station rainfall data. December 2022 was a record. The 2.99" shown for January 2023 is through the first 6 days. 

Folsom Reservoir (FR), the reservoir that supplies a lot of the regions water as well as the irrigation water for GBGC is filling up fast. Notice the vertical line heading up then down on this year's graph line. FR operators started releasing water to keep the  primary purpose of the reservoir intact, which is flood protection.

Snow in the mountains still currently holding up well, especially for the Central Sierra which feed FR.

Although FR is filling up quick, The States larger reservoirs up North are taking longer. FR fills fairly quickly because of its size and relation to a very active watershed, but these larger reservoirs take longer and are key to ending the drought we are officially still in.

The forecast continues to call for rain and if the forecasted amount of rain comes to pass, we could be close to surpassing 2016 - 2017 GBGC rainfall record for January.

So far this winter we have had well over 30 trees or large portion of trees that have come down from weather related storms. The multi trunked, Interior Live Oak on the left-hand side of #4, just over 200 yards out will be the first one that will change the hole opening up the approach shot on the left-hand side of the hole. This one came down during the windstorm of Saturday evening 1/7/23